


Home with a heart

by Eloarei



Series: Day on the Horizon [5]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Gardens & Gardening, House Hunting, Housework, Illnesses, Menstruation, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29751402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloarei/pseuds/Eloarei
Summary: Ready to start their new life and bring their wandering to an end, Addisson and Fawkes find a spot to put down roots-- of both the metaphorical and literal variety.[Sequel to "Birds of a feather".]
Relationships: Fawkes/Female Lone Wanderer, Fawkes/Lone Wanderer
Series: Day on the Horizon [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882009
Comments: 6
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was gonna wait until I finished writing the next part in the series, but I got impatient! So here's three chapters (well, just one at a time) of pure domestic nonsense. Although, eheh, this is about the point in the series where I feel like I'm gonna have to start apologizing for something in every chapter XD;. 
> 
> NOTE about the "Chose Not to Use Warnings": None of the standard warnings should feature in this series at all! I'm just using the "?!" to indicate there might be _other_ things that people don't like. For example, chapter 2 includes depictions of illness and other bodily things. I'll post warnings in the chapter notes, and update the tags when appropriate.

Addisson was never particularly fond of being called the ‘Lone Wanderer’. That had never been something she’d chosen or decided. She hadn’t wanted to spend those first few weeks traveling completely alone, and though she appreciated Dogmeat immensely, she hadn’t ever _meant_ for it to be just the two of them, those following months. It was just that… there was never anybody who could or who wanted to keep up with them, at least until Cross decided to help find the G.E.C.K. Then after that, there was Fawkes, and she really couldn’t be called Lone Wanderer any longer, because he’d hardly left her side since.   
  
The ‘Lone’ part was mostly something Three Dog did for the sake of radio drama, and she didn’t hold it against him, especially since it didn’t _really_ stick. But still nearly everyone she met called her Wanderer, and she only didn’t mind because it was not a bad nickname, all things considered. It was just… she didn’t really identify with it. ‘Wanderer’ was… it wasn’t an insult or anything, but it certainly had a sort of connotation to it, didn’t it? Of someone who couldn’t stay put, who traveled aimlessly, just for the sake of putting one foot in front of the other? It was a weightier and lonelier title than ‘Traveler’, or ‘Explorer’, or just… ‘Scavenger’. Any of these would have been perfectly accurate. Hell, they could have called her ‘Exterminator’ if they were just picking random vaguely-accurate descriptors. After all, she certainly killed plenty of mutated creatures, and she did it with the same sort of single-mindedness with which she wandered-- which was to say, _not._ Exterminating was something she happened to do, the same way that she just happened to seem to be wandering.   
  
Anyway, she figured ‘wanderer’ was true _enough,_ under more colloquial definitions. And under those definitions, it was something she really excelled at. The two months spent in Rivet City were the outlier, the only two months since leaving the vault during which she didn’t stray far from home for more than a few hours, and always went back in time to work in the morning. All the rest of the months, she’d gone back and forth across the Capital on numerous errands, living out of her backpack and sleeping at campfires. So, she was used to it, even though it wasn’t her passion.   
  
(That wasn’t to say that she didn’t like traveling! It was definitely exciting, and she liked to know what was going on in the world around her. She simply wasn’t as overcome with wanderlust as the name Wanderer seemed to suggest.)   
  
Fawkes was neither used to it, nor _un_ used to it, as he’d spent less time running chores across the wasteland, but had accompanied Addisson since she’d freed him. By her count, that put his post-vault wandering amount at just a month or two higher than the time he’d spent settled. None of that was really relevant though; he’d already professed and promised to follow Addisson wherever she went. It was part of the deal, being married and all.   
  
Addisson smiled to herself as she picked through some scrap in an abandoned building. It still came as a surprise to her sometimes, when she woke up from a disorienting sleep and had to run through her entire life to remember where she was and what the hell she was doing. There’d been so much chaos after leaving the vault; it felt like her life had just started then, like she was born into that frantic mess. And the whole beginning of that life was just… fear, and… sadness and pain. Tiredness. Loneliness. One big problem after another. It kinda felt like that was just how life _was,_ something that she thought a lot of people still agreed with, here in the wasteland. And yet, she’d broken out of that supposed intrinsic difficulty, just by stumbling upon the right person. Fawkes had been willing to partner himself with her immediately, and that made all the difference, even before they’d married.   
  
_Now,_ the difference it made was so stark that on those disoriented mornings, it was becoming hard to tell which part of her life felt like a strange dream. On one hand she couldn’t believe that she had gotten married, and on the other hand it seemed wrong that she could ever have _not._ It was odd and unpleasant to think that other circumstances might have led her down a different path. If she’d gone down one of those, would she have somehow known she was missing this one?   
  
Luckily, it didn’t matter. It could be strange and unlikely, or it could be the only possible way for things to go, but she _was_ married to Fawkes, and it was something Addisson was grateful for every day. Her ‘skill’ at wandering was something she was grateful for as well, as the two things combined brought them here and would hopefully take them even further.   
  
They’d left Rivet City several weeks back, and set out to find the place that they might soon call home. Truly, this was the closest she thought she’d ever come to really ‘wandering’ (though it still didn’t really count because they had a purpose, if not a geographical goal). Each day they meandered through the wasteland, keeping a keen eye out for a plot of land that suited their needs, or at least caught their attention.   
  
Honestly, as seasoned as they were in traveling and surviving the harsh wasteland, their needs weren’t very high, and they already had most of them at hand; Addisson needed food and water, some place to sleep, and Fawkes to be by her side. Fawkes romantically (and predictably) professed to needing only Addisson. (And similarly, Dogmeat didn’t really _need_ anything, but seemed to prefer when his favorite two people were around.)   
  
_But,_ all three of them would benefit from someplace with walls, if only to keep the bloatflies out, so endless camping was really not their end goal, even if Addisson kind of liked using Fawkes as a portable mattress.   
  
In order not to waste their efforts, they plotted a simple path to follow on the map, heading roughly north from the city of their departure, with the intention of turning west once they’d strayed too far from their usual stomping grounds.   
  
“I will build you a home wherever you like,” Fawkes said, while Addisson was musing over just how far into the unknown they ought to consider settling.   
  
There was a charm to being alone together in the wilderness, and the introverted part of her definitely preferred the idea of not having to deal with the drama that inevitably followed _people,_ but she’d grown up surrounded by others and had never been able to completely distance herself from the idea of community, even if that community was often a pain in the ass. (After all, nice people and assholes both were drawn to civilization. Raiders didn’t live far from settlements or there’d be no one to raid.)   
  
“I think it’s probably better not to be _too_ far from, y’know, _something_ else,” she decided, so they kept within the confines of the map. There was almost certainly life beyond its borders (traders came and went; Doctor Li had probably gone by now too), but Washington tugged jealously at Addisson’s heart; it didn’t want to let her go entirely.   
  
So they traveled west and did the same again, turning back when it felt they’d gone just a little too far.   
  
Neither of them really knew exactly what it was they were looking for; it felt more like one of those ‘you’ll know it when you see it’ situations, although they did have some ideas. First and foremost, it couldn’t be _too_ close to a pit of radscorpions or something. Addisson was hoping her future might rely at least a little bit less on fighting for her life than her past had, so (relative) safety was paramount.   
  
Second, it had to be suitable for a house. Fawkes had ideas about foundation building, and certain locations just weren’t sustainable for the kind of architecture he was envisioning. When they sat down around the campfire at night, he would drag out the large hardcover construction book his friend Henry had given him as a wedding gift, and Addisson could just see him building the house larger and larger in his imagination every time. She couldn’t see the house yet, but she liked knowing that he could, and so she trusted when he said this-or-that area was too sandy to support the basis of their new home.   
  
Third, the place ought to have that… ‘certain something’, which was an annoying qualification because neither of them knew what that meant, even if they both agreed it was a prerequisite.   
  
In the end, she wasn’t sure they actually hit that last one; she kind of thought they’d both just gotten tired enough of wandering to agree to settle down just about anywhere that wasn’t gross. The location made them both go ‘hmm’ consideringly, when they landed on it, and linger around as they imagined its potential, and when they realized they’d both had that reaction, they knew they’d hit the spot. Addisson’s only reservation was that it didn’t make her heart swell with joy like Fawkes did; when it came to him, there was never any chance that he _wasn’t_ the one. If this plot of land was a person, she didn’t think she’d marry it.   
  
She laughed at herself for thinking anything in the world stood a chance of eliciting that kind of reaction in her, after Fawkes. It wasn’t this poor place’s fault that it couldn’t compare.   
  
But it really was a pretty good little place. It seemed like it had been a little neighborhood before the bombs. A cracked asphalt road wound up a hill through a handful of houses so ruined that Addisson hesitated to call them skeletons, but up at the top of the hill stood a house only _partially_ destroyed. It wasn’t yet quite livable, but the main supporting beams stood on a strong-looking foundation, and held up a roof that covered most of it. It was a modest little one-story thing, but Fawkes was of the opinion that that was better.   
  
“I confess I am hesitant to try my hand at building stairs yet,” he said, and Addisson couldn’t blame him, given how many times he’d fallen through dilapidated staircases, trying to follow her to an old ruin’s second floor.   
  
“Stairs are overrated,” she said, waving it off with a grin. Actually, she really liked multi-story buildings, because there was comfort in being above danger (and getting a good sniping position), but it wasn’t anywhere close to a deal breaker. They’d been sleeping on the ground for weeks; being two feet off the dirt and separated by a mattress and some concrete? Practically sounded like a luxury.   
  
So even though Addisson had not experienced love at first sight with the place, once they’d made their decision it definitely rooted its way into her heart. She began to see more and more potential in its frame and its few bare walls, and the patches of clean ground that surrounded it. This hadn’t been one of her stated prerequisites, but even before they’d left the city, she knew she wanted a place where she could try her hand at growing a garden. She hadn’t spent two months in a botany lab just for fun (though she had enjoyed it). Just like Fawkes was visibly eager to use the skills he’d learned while working there, Addisson couldn’t wait to sew the first seeds and watch them grow into something beautiful and rarely seen there in the dust. It wouldn’t be easy (of course not; otherwise every wastelander would have flourishing gardens), but she had confidence in the secrets she’d learned. This house would see the pale green of new life reaching for the sun, and she would nurture it to its fullest potential.   
  
And after that, she figured she’d sell it at Megaton, since it turned out that they’d accidentally wandered rather close. The town was far enough away that she didn’t feel like Jericho or someone might be watching them, but close enough to easily be the most convenient trading location. It felt like a decent distance; she and Fawkes didn’t have to bear their scrutiny, but she could still visit Moira to sell broken toasters, with less than two hours’ leisurely walk.   
  
(Perhaps the only thing that would have made the location more ideal would be proximity to Rivet City as well. But unfortunately, their ship had come aground surrounded by city, and she wasn’t brave or dumb enough to try to build a farmhouse near such steel-grey mirelurk infested lands.)   
  
In truth, there was a little bit of hesitation (on her part only) in settling down so close to Megaton, and to the vault. It wasn’t really anything logical, it was just that… well she’d been so adamant about getting away from the place, hadn’t she? She’d really made it sound like she was done with the whole area, and she had _meant_ to be! Megaton was the cradle of her new life after being birthed from the vault, and like any infant she hadn’t had total control over her association with the place, or what she was taught there. She’d been practically helpless when she’d stumbled upon the place, and latched onto it like a lifeline, but once she was old enough to see it objectively she’d rejected it and its narrow views. To still linger in its periphery, even as she was starting a new life… It felt like something she had to justify somehow, to _someone._   
  
But Fawkes didn’t care. He didn’t judge her about it in the slightest, and seemed to think it made perfect sense for a variety of reasons. “The place is familiar to you, and you have friends there,” he said when Addisson guiltily brought it up, justifying it for her before she even had the chance. “It’s sensible to remain close to the people and places you have formed bonds with.”   
  
_‘Yeah, but what about the people who would rather see you dead,’_ she thought, bitter at them and bitter at herself. Wanting to distance herself from the kind of assholes who fantasized pulling the trigger on her husband ought to outweigh the draw of familiarity, in her opinion. Just, unfortunately, it didn’t. And Fawkes didn’t care, so eventually she decided not to fight it.   
  
There were plenty of other things to focus on; _plenty._ The first order (after clearing the area of radroaches and the one feral ghoul that was napping on the outskirts of the cluster of homes) was making their chosen house enough of a shelter to sleep in. Otherwise, it would be no better than a camp. They cleared debris from the floor, which seemed like a simple task but ended up taking days, during which time they _did_ camp, with a little fire pit dug out in the semi-soft ground where the garden would later go. After the floor was clear, they hit a small disagreement: was the next step _walls,_ or _bed?_ Addisson said bed, because Fawkes deserved to have something soft to lay on for once; Fawkes said walls, because he knew the threat of enemies ambushing them at night stressed Addisson out. They compromised, mostly because it wasn’t entirely up to them: what they built next depended almost entirely on what kind of scrap they could find in the area.   
  
Fawkes ended up winning out, as the grand majority of the little neighborhood’s available scrap was wood and steel from the other houses’ semi-skeletons. He had Addisson help him identify the largest salvageable pieces, and then he carried them over to the house and set to work nailing and welding them to the frame, very cheerfully. And at night, he laid down on the floor of the spot they’d chosen for their bedroom and pulled Addisson down on top of him, hugging her close like a smug bastard. She buried a smile in his chest, but swore she would find them mattresses (mattress _es, plural)_ before long.   
  
The house came together, surely and not _too_ slowly. They made good progress every day, and the house had four whole walls within a week, even though Fawkes took his time to ensure there were windows. They’d both had enough of totally enclosed spaces, and he knew Addisson liked having multiple lines of sight available. Only one of the windows had any glass in it, but that was par for the course; he gave them shutters, anyway.   
  
There were two doors into the house-- one in the ‘living room’ (or what would be the living room), and one in the ‘kitchen’ (which still lacked a sink, a fridge, a stove, and a dining table, but had a cabinet for storing food). Technically they were the same room, as they lacked any dividing walls, but there was a support beam in between them that implied there might have been a wall at one point. (They left it open, for Addisson’s line of sight, and Fawkes’ bulk.) The two doors were just doorways until Fawkes was done with the walls and asked Addisson to scavenge hinges for him, but as soon as she knew they were _going_ to be doors, she made a suggestion.   
  
“Why don’t you make them bigger? So you don’t have to duck through them. The ceiling’s, what? Eight feet?”   
  
Only half of the ceiling still remained under the vaulted roof, but Fawkes stood under a section of it and raised his arm; his elbow butted against the ceiling cleanly. He could have easily reached through. “About eight feet, yes,” he replied, and Addisson could see him debating the merits of ceilings at all.   
  
_“Well,”_ she said, and that was about all it took. She’d planted the seed she wanted. The next day, a portion of the remaining ceiling had been ripped out and set aside to patch the roof better with. The day after that, the kitchen doorway had been made about a foot taller and wider, though Fawkes left the other one alone, apparently for aesthetic’s sake. Addisson hummed and returned to hammering her scavenged hinges flat enough to use.   
  
It was all coming along so nicely, but every time she thought they might be close to done, Fawkes pointed out something else that needed mending or building or removing, in the case of those too-low ceilings. Addisson admitted that she didn’t know what she didn’t know, and when it came to home improvements, she didn’t know much. She brushed up on it by reading Fawkes’ book, but it still remained his forte, and he kept finding more work for them. She didn’t mind, anyway; the whole thing was almost fun, compared to the time they’d spent together traipsing through dark subways and piling up ghoul corpses. Addisson could tell Fawkes was enjoying himself greatly; to him, the art of creating was infinitely more sophisticated than the art of destroying. True, he was nearly unparalleled at killing (as was she), but here he was really in his element. That they were making this house _together_ was even better.   
  
Soon, Fawkes determined that the worst of it was complete, and they could start to focus on less elemental aspects (not that it basically ever rained in the Capital; the element they were most likely to encounter was dust storms). Addisson’s first order of business, no matter Fawkes’ opinion that it wasn’t all that important, was those mattresses. As soon as he spoke his approval of the basic house structure being more-or-less complete, she dragged him out on a scavenging trip to some neighboring towns. It was a nice break from the endless repairing; Dogmeat was especially thrilled, even though he didn’t seem to mind hanging out at home as much as Addisson had expected him to. (She figured he’d acclimated to it a little bit, in Rivet City. And there were still molerats for him to chase, a block or so outside the property.)   
  
Their first trip yielded just one mattress, which was fine because Addisson would have felt bad asking Fawkes to carry two of the unwieldy things anyway (for all that he probably _could_ carry about ten of them, with her on top). It still wasn’t quite a regular living situation, with the single mattress on the floor in the bedroom, but it was a significant upgrade, and Addisson was happy that Fawkes finally had a place to sleep that wasn’t rock-hard. (She still slept mostly on top of him, but it was nice to know that if she rolled off in the night, she _might_ not hit bare floor.)   
  
(Also, it was nice to finally have a bed again for, you know, other purposes.)   
  
Over the next few weeks, they took periodic breaks from housework to go scavenge (largely to stock up on food and water, since they had very little of either readily available yet), and every so often they stumbled upon mattresses and hauled one back. One time they found two of them in the same day, graced with the option of choosing the cleanest one. By the end of the month, they had a mattress set-up very similar to the one from the Weatherly hotel, which just about comfortably fit all three of them. They still slept more-or-less on top of each other, but at least now they didn’t have to.   
  
“Perhaps next week I’ll try my hand at building a bed frame,” Fawkes said one morning as he awkwardly rolled out of bed. It was difficult enough for Addisson to get up off of something so low to the floor; for someone as tall as Fawkes, it was kind of a silly sight.   
  
“Or we could just stack up more mattresses,” Addisson suggested with a shrug. “Two more layers and you’d probably be able to sit normally on it. Mostly normal.”   
  
Fawkes laughed at something she was clearly forgetting. “A stack of mattresses doesn’t stop a radroach from climbing into your blankets,” he reminded her.   
  
Addisson shuddered violently. “God, okay, you’re right.”   
  
He spent his spare time that week attempting to make a frame solid enough to support 600 pounds and withstand… a certain amount of stress. It was a considerable undertaking, but he kept at it.   
  
Meanwhile, the dirt around the outside of the house was turned into something resembling _soil,_ with a little bit of work, and some fertilizer. She’d been able to scavenge a few bags from neighboring towns, but it wasn’t a widely available commodity. A good amount of what she’d collected came from when they stumbled upon a caravan.   
  
The two guards were predictably concerned about Fawkes, who was as armed as ever for wasteland travel, but seeing him side-by-side with a girl and a dog (even if the girl was armed as well, and just as deadly) apparently put them at ease enough to let her speak with the trader. (This was pretty normal, whenever they came across caravans. The traveling merchants were cautious as a necessity.)   
  
“Weird request for you,” Addisson started, after they’d had short introductions. “I need some fertilizer. Manure, I mean. Can I buy some brahmin poop?”   
  
The trader glanced at his bodyguards and they shared a look of mild bewilderment. “I… don’t see why not,” he said after a moment of consideration. “You’d have to be willing to pay a pretty steep price, though, if you wanted us to sit around and wait that long.”   
  
“We could just… follow along?” Addisson suggested with a shrug.   
  
More looks were shared among the group, but they all quickly agreed that it shouldn’t be too much trouble, especially since Addisson’s strange little family looked like it could take care of itself. And so that was how they ended up spending a day traveling with a caravan, Addisson periodically stopping to scoop poop into a bucket or bag. She and Fawkes (and sometimes Dogmeat, depending on if the caravaners were paying attention to him or not) would wander off for a few minutes to look through scrap piles or old buildings and then come back in time for Nettie’s next deposit. In between interesting things to scavenge, they chatted with the travelers, who remained wary of Fawkes and almost equally wary of Addisson for choosing to travel with him. They weren’t unfriendly, but they were like anyone who wasn’t used to seeing the two of them together.   
  
“Hey,” she said to Fawkes, as the day was wearing on and they were about to rejoin the caravan for probably the last hour before they headed home. “Are you okay with me holding your hand in front of them? I know it’s not really necessary, because it’s not like we’ll probably ever see them again, but… I wanna show them. You know what I mean?”   
  
“You never require permission to hold my hand,” Fawkes replied, taking hers.   
  
She swung their joined hands between them, feeling childishly happy. “Well, yeah,” she said. “But, you know. I just… I didn’t want it to seem like I was using you just to make a point. Even though I sort of am.”   
  
As usual, he wasn’t bothered. Rather, he seemed to get her completely. “I understand. Sometimes, my greatest desire is to tell everyone that I am lucky enough to have you as a wife, no matter what that makes them think.”   
  
“God, _same.”_   
  
They reunited with the group, who was settling down to camp, now that the day’s light was fading. As was normal, they kept armed until they were safely in the circle of the makeshift camp site, where one of the two guards was standing, armed, at attention, while the other was helping the trader get the fire going. Strolling up to the group hand-in-hand would have been the most expedient way to get their point across, but it just wasn’t economical, when both their favored guns were two-handers.   
  
“Staying for dinner?” the trader asked, kneeling down in front of the pot he’d set up over the fire. “I’ll cook up that molerat you brought us earlier.” (It was funny to note that he’d warmed up to them considerably when they started killing edible vermin and donating to the group whatever Dogmeat didn’t want.)   
  
“Sure,” Addisson said cheerfully, and she and Fawkes sat down around the fire with the others. They spent their time sorting and repairing gear as the molerat stew cooked, and then they all quite happily chowed down, telling travel stories while they ate.   
  
(The guards were pleased to both be able to sit down and eat at the same time for once, with Dogmeat dutifully patrolling the camp’s borders, as he tended to do.   
  
“You wouldn’t consider selling your dog, would you?” the trader asked, noticing the significant rise in his companions’ morale.   
  
“Not if my life depended on it,” Addisson answered, laughing.)   
  
When the bowls of stew were nearly done, Addisson made just a little bit of a show of scooting closer to Fawkes (who already sat within arm’s reach). “Hey, you’ve got a little--” she said, reaching up to wipe a nonexistent food particle off of Fawkes’ face. Nobody else was sat close enough to them to tell for sure that there was nothing there.   
  
Fawkes allowed Addisson to pull almost all the way back before he captured her hand and threaded their fingers together, which made her blush and lean against him. They didn’t exaggerate their motions more than just the _slightest bit,_ but they could tell the others were watching. To let it seem more natural, they didn’t say or do anything more.   
  
The conversation lagged just a little, as the trader and his guards were distracted by their display, but they stuttered back on track and carried on, and the chatter returned to normal as everyone continued eating. Addisson wondered what they thought, but didn’t dwell on it terribly, because unlike with the people in Megaton or Rivet City, it didn’t matter in the slightest. If the caravaners were disgusted by them, they never had to see them again. It was kind of freeing, to know that.   
  
The talk dwindled down to a soft murmur as their hosts began to settle in, the guards talking quietly to each other while the merchant pulled out a ledger and tallied numbers.   
  
“Should we head home, my lovely wife?” Fawkes asked, soft enough to be private, but not so quiet as to be secret, given the travelers’ proximity. If they were paying attention, anyone in the small camp would be able to hear them. “Or do you need more time?”   
  
“I think they sort of got the picture,” Addisson murmured, warm and close in a way just too intimate to be only friendly. Then she laughed, because Fawkes was giving her kind of a look. “Oh, you mean the manure? I mean, I could use more, but we can only carry so much anyway.”   
  
Fawkes tilted his head towards her; his expression was an amused, endeared sort of look that she suspected he’d gotten from her. “Is demonstrating our relationship your main priority?” he asked, a bit teasing, though he knew he was right. She felt kind of embarrassed that she’d fixated on something so trivial.   
  
But he surprised her by being at least as romantic (and perhaps a bit petty) as she was, leaning forward to kiss her as soundly as such a polite man dared to do in company. (She wasn’t surprised that he was romantic, even though some part of her was always still thrilled by every kiss or romantic gesture; she _knew_ he was romantic at his core. The surprise was that he cared to show off, fully aware that it might bother their hosts. He was normally a very private person, and hated offending others. Her wheedling about being public in Rivet City, culminating in their proud and eager wedding, must have stretched or snapped his sense of propriety when it came to their relationship, and honestly, Addisson couldn’t be happier. _This_ was what she wanted for him: the same sort of heedless confidence that normal people were allowed to have about their passions and accomplishments.)   
  
The caravaners definitely went a little wide-eyed (even the trader, who was a little slow to catch on, but realized after a moment that the camp had gone quiet and glanced up to see what was happening), but they tried not to look like they were staring.   
  
“I don’t think I really need to answer that, do I?” Addisson murmured, in response to Fawkes’ previous question. He knew he was spot-on.   
  
Shuffling from the other side of the campfire caught their attention; one of the guards had sat up on her knees to scoop herself another bowl of stew (mostly to have something to do, Addisson thought). She sat back down and chanced a look at their guests, opting for a nonchalant expression. “So, uh, if you don’t mind me asking, how did your husband get turned into a super mutant?”   
  
Addisson was, as usual, just a little bit offended that the woman had asked _her_ about Fawkes instead of speaking to Fawkes directly, but it was something they were pretty used to by then. She _was_ happy, though, that the guard had cottoned on to Fawkes’ ‘wife’ endearment. Anyway, she just nodded at Fawkes to explain the situation to his liking.   
  
“I was unfortunately involved in an experiment that went quite wrong,” he said, which Addisson supposed was a fair enough explanation. ‘Involved’ was putting it a bit lightly, when something akin to ‘tortured’ was more accurate, but she didn’t expect Fawkes to get quite that deep with an acquaintance of ten hours, who may or may not know anything about how super mutants were made. (Most people didn’t. A lot of folks just assumed they were the opposite spectrum of ghouls.)   
  
“Oh,” was the guard’s surprised response, and Addisson had to wonder what she was expecting. “Well it’s great that your wife stuck with you through all that… hardship.”   
  
Addisson had to hold back a snort. Ahh, the willful ignorance of people who didn’t want to imagine that a girl could fall in love with ‘a monster’.   
  
“No, the hardship came long before,” Fawkes replied with a smile. “Since our meeting, it has been only pleasure.” He turned to gaze meaningfully down at Addisson, a look so full of warmth and adoration that she knew he meant what he said _entirely._ (Not that there was any doubt, of course. She knew how he felt.)   
  
She played it up, which wasn’t difficult. _“Oh, Fawkes,”_ she purred. “You know you can’t look at me like that in public!”   
  
“Then perhaps we had better go home,” he said, standing and offering his hand to pull her up (and to hold).   
  
The trader sat up straighter in a hurry. “Oh! Well, you don’t have to go just yet! You could camp for the night. I’m sure Nettie will have more manure for you in the morning.”   
  
Fawkes and Addisson looked at each other in silent communication. This guy was really offering to let _them,_ near strangers and _strange ones,_ at that, stay the night with them? Did he… feel guilty for their assumptions about Fawkes? Or was the merchant just eager to hold on to a source of income for as long as possible (since they were paying for Nettie’s poop)? Or maybe they really just liked the security of having a larger group, without having to pay them.   
  
But Fawkes’ warm words and looks really _did_ make Addisson want to retire to the privacy of their humble house, where she could indulge in whatever whims and cravings hit her without worry of offending others (or just… being publicly indecent). “Thanks, really,” she said to the trader and his group. “But we’ve got about as much as we can carry anyway. It’s been fun.” Turning to Fawkes, she squeezed his hand and said, “Shall we go?”   
  
“Yes, _let’s,”_ he replied, seemingly feeling quite the same way.   
  
“Well, alright,” the trader said, as the group stood to see their guests off (and to readjust the guard schedule, since now somebody was going to have to stand watch). “I’m sure we’ll be back around this way in the future, if you need more fertilizer.”   
  
“Thanks,” Addisson said with a grin, happy to hear they hadn’t freaked them out enough to burn bridges, and just as happy to leave them be for the time being. She squeezed Fawkes’ hand one more time before pulling away enough to arm herself for the trip. Whistling to Dogmeat, and waving over her shoulder, they were off.   
  
They traveled a few hours through the night and arrived back home with a full moon shining bright over them. It illuminated the freshly repaired angles of the house, the tilled ground of the garden plot, and the wide expanse of land that laid out below, quiet and still in the night. It was a vision of peace and opportunity-- and maybe it was fleeting but it was beautiful enough and hard-won, and Addisson was desperate to watch it grow into something that might have a life of its own, to rise up out of the staleness of the wastes. She really wanted to nourish it.   
  
She wanted to go till her fertilizer into the ground and sew in the seeds right away, eager to witness spring green crack through the earth. But Fawkes laid his warm hand on her shoulder and drew her softly out of her reverie. He laid down their night’s bounty by the edge of the house, reverent and careful, as if the manure was fragile instead of only precious.   
  
“Tomorrow perhaps you could show me your work on the garden,” he said, and it was not a dismissal of what he knew she was thinking, only a reminder that it would still be there for her in the morning.   
  
“I’d love to,” she said, the smile sitting warm in her eyes. “I really wanna share that with you.” Gazing up at him, she was struck (again) by how lucky she was for things to have turned out this way. “I… I’m really glad you’re here with me, you know that?”   
  
“Yes, I think so,” Fawkes replied, apparently finding her sudden emotional state humorous; his eyes were laughing, maybe just as glad as hers.   
  
They didn’t speak any more words into the clear silver-blue night, instead retreating quietly into the seclusion of their home. It was still a work in progress, but it insulated them comfortably, incubating their wishes until day lit upon them again. They huddled together in the embrace of the dark, kept close and combined their hopes and dreams with gentle fervor. In the morning they would take root, another little piece of the plan they kept devising and revising.   
  
This house was home already, because it was where love came to rest its head, but there was still room to grow. A second story; a flourishing garden. They couldn’t wait to see it come to life. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for discussions of flu-like illness, menstruation, and other bodily inconveniences.

Life in the wasteland versus life in the vault were obviously vastly different, for a wide variety of reasons. The ability to see the sun and sky was probably the biggest one, even though most wastelanders didn’t really consider such mundane things when they imagined living in a vault. It was just that the sky was really _so huge;_ much bigger than you realized when you’d grown up seeing it regularly. And the sun was _so bright,_ that nothing inside a vault could possibly compare. So maybe most people would focus on the safety and lack of radiation when they thought of a vault, but any former vault dweller would tell you, the biggest difference was easily the horizon and the massive sky it encased.  
  
Safety and security were a close second, of course. In a vault, everything was clean, there wasn’t a filthy wasteland creature in sight, and the residents generally had as much food and water as they needed. As far as quality of life differences went, that one was probably tops to most people. (Addisson knew she’d personally trade the vault’s clean halls for the open sky any day, but if she was less good at hunting and scavenging then she might have felt differently about it.)  
  
But there were a lot of little things about vault life that Addisson hadn’t really taken into account, in that busy first year out. Or rather, some of them she’d definitely noticed, but they hadn’t been too much of an issue.  
  
Bathing was one of those things she’d had to get used to. Or, un-used to. Luckily, that was made easier by being almost drop-dead busy with _everything else._ She definitely noticed that she felt dirty, the first few weeks, but it was not a major concern when compared to worrying about her dad-- and worrying about her own safety. Being clean would be great, but being alive was a lot more important. She probably could have used her caps on copious amounts of clean water and some way to heat them (turn Wadsworth upside down, maybe? It had crossed her mind), but she’d used the money on ammo and gun repairs instead, and it wasn’t an expense she regretted. Anyway, she’d gotten used to it.  
  
Sun exposure was sort of a surprising one that had shocked her at first, before she’d acclimated to it. Everyone warned about _nuclear_ radiation, from the war’s fallout, but nobody had told her how vicious _solar_ radiation was. They had UV lights in the vault, but it didn’t remotely compare to the real thing. And the worst part was that she couldn’t tell it was burning her, until she woke up the next day, skin as red as her hair and practically glowing, in agonizing pain when she so much as flexed. She’d still been wearing her vault suit at the time, so it was just her face and neck and the backs of her hands that got raw and blistered, but that was _so_ much more than enough. Moira had cooed and laughed at her pitiful state, but promised she’d be fine in a week.  
  
Dealing with the various other overt hazards of the wasteland was so obvious that it almost wasn’t worth mentioning, but they brought with them wounds which _were_. Back in the vault, there’d been very little opportunity to be seriously hurt. A kitchen accident, a fist-fight. But even then, there’d always been someone with a first-aid kit nearby. Outside, when a raider’s lucky shot grazed her arm and she didn’t have any stimpacks, all there was to do was deal with it. That’s where her few scars came from-- running out of supplies before she knew how to ration (and snipe).  
  
Right now what plagued Addisson were general health concerns, which were really minor in the grand scheme of things, but totally busted her butt because she was unused to them. The wasteland was rife with atrocious diseases. She remembered getting bone worms on her second week and struggling with it for several days until Doc Church in Megaton took pity on her. These days Dogmeat mostly kept diseased creatures off of her, but there were still more mundane illnesses to content with. The ‘common cold’ was aptly named; she’d probably gotten it five times already, and even though it went away on its own in a few days, it was still miserable to be coughing and sneezing all the damn time (and embarrassing to miss an important shot because she sneezed at just the wrong time; Fawkes didn’t hold it against her though, even though it resulted in his getting a facefull of rabid ghoul).  
  
Nobody in the vault had ever had the cold, but she’d heard about it before: stories of a persistent annoyance from before the bombs, which they’d carefully made sure nobody carried into the vault. They’d taught the kids about it in school, during one of their many attempts to reaffirm just how great it was to live in a vault and how much they didn’t want to open the door to the nasty outside world! Nobody wanted to get such terrible diseases as the common cold, and _god forbid_ you catch the flu! It was a hellish virus that made you sick and feverish. Do you like throwing up? the teacher asked. No? Then stay inside the safe clean vault and avoid the flu!  
  
Addisson didn’t regret leaving the vault, she’d swear it til the end of her days. Basically every good thing in her life had happened after escaping that place. But god did she have second thoughts when she got sick.  
  
It didn’t hit suddenly. Just like with the cold, the symptoms started out gently. A little bit of a headache; maybe the air pressure had changed. Getting tired too early in the day; could be she’d worn herself out the day before hauling buckets of dirt around. Having to pee a lot? Well she _had_ just tried a new tea recipe from her very first flower bloom. It was probably just having a diuretic effect on her.  
  
She didn’t realize she was actually ill until she nearly chucked on one of her seedlings. Everything was fine (aside from the few aforementioned issues, which were easy enough to ignore), and then she knelt down to inspect a sprout that was growing a little leggy, and it hit her-- a wave of nausea so sudden and volatile that she’d have probably puked if there was anything heavier than water in her stomach.  
  
_“No no no no,”_ she mumbled to herself, trying to will her stomach to settle. “I’ve never thrown up once in my life and I’m not gonna start now.”  
  
The next few days proved quite the battle between her effort to keep her meals from reappearing spontaneously, and the flu’s apparent obsession with making her experience something new.  
  
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Fawkes said guiltily as he helped her make dinner. “I cannot recall ever feeling ill myself, but I would take it from you in a heartbeat if I could.”  
  
Addisson shook her head, and then regretted it because both her stomach and brain became angry at her. “It’s okay. I’m just glad you don’t have to deal with this crap. Anyway, if it gets much worse then at least you’ll be able to take care of me.”  
  
Fawkes nodded. “Anything you need. Simply call on me.”  
  
So far she’d been able to manage, so she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to have to rely on her patient husband. The flu was supposed to be like the cold and fade with time. ‘Weeks of discomfort’, the teacher back in the vault had told them. That sounded terrible, but at least it was a timeframe she could count. She’d win this war, eventually.  
  
Her stomach won the battle, though, when they sat down to eat. It was roasted molerat and Instamash, a meal they had pretty regularly and which Addisson liked alright. Not as good as radstag, but better than radroach, and at least the mash was the same as it’d ever been. But when she was about to take a bite of it, her stomach very blatantly said _‘not today’,_ and she was forced to put it down or risk ruining her appetite entirely.  
  
“Hungry, Dogchow?” she asked her canine companion. He normally ate meat fresh off the kill, but he happily snatched the cooked molerat when she offered it to him.  
  
Fawkes frowned. “Would you like me to cook something else for you?”  
  
Shrugging, Addisson said, “Nah. I’m not that hungry anyway.” She did dutifully eat the potatoes, but coming so close to being sick kind of put a damper on her enjoyment of food.  
  
It was okay, though. All things considered, the flu was not a big deal. Pretty much everything else was going wonderfully well. The house was in better order every day. The frame had been shored up to an almost industrial kind of strength, the roof’s exposed A-frame reinforced. The holes in the roof had been patched over with steel sheeting, as had the siding. All but two of the windows now had glass in them, which was great when dust storms came around. Their collection of mattresses had finally been given a sturdy bed frame to hold them (and it only took one amusing failure to get it right). Now Fawkes was working on turning the space above the bedroom and bathroom (the only rooms with ceilings) into a sort of loft.  
  
“It may be for your use only,” Fawkes sheepishly admitted as he struggled to design stairs that would hold his full upright weight. But it seemed like he was enjoying the challenge, anyway.  
  
As for Addisson, the garden was going about as well as she could have rightly expected, balancing her bright wishes for lush fruits and vegetables with the truth she knew about the dry nutrient-deficient earth they had access to. Doctor Li had taught her a lot, for which she was unendingly grateful, because otherwise there just would’ve been no way to get even a weed to flourish. And honestly, she couldn’t say that her plants were _flourishing,_ but they were definitely growing. Aside from Fawkes, their little garden patch was the greenest thing for miles around. A few flowers had sprouted up within just weeks and she’d already started using them for teas. At the moment, there were a few carrot plants that had already bloomed, and a melon that was beginning to crawl out of its plot and should be flowering soon. Her favorite growth currently was a little mutfruit bush sapling that she knew would be a much longer-term project, but she had high hopes for.  
  
And they had bigger plans still too. The brahmin manure they’d bartered for had proved so useful that Addisson was determined to find one of their own. Fawkes doubly approved of the idea, given that such a beast could greatly increase their carrying capacity on long scavenging trips. He was running out of good scrap from the other house-ruins in the neighborhood, but he wanted to keep building up their little homestead.  
  
It was kind of a wild and crazy idea, but Addisson could really see having a whole farm one day, fields spread out below them growing fresh food for… well, maybe not the whole Capital, but a lot of people in the area, anyway. Her parents’ dream had been clean water for the wasteland, and that was well on its way to being a reality. If they’d been able to see it happen, maybe they would have set their sights on food next. It was a logical conclusion, wasn’t it?  
  
In the face of all that progress and all those grand intentions, something like the flu was just a bump in the road. A minor inconvenience, and one she was coming to terms with.  
  
But the morning after she couldn’t stomach molerat, Addisson woke to another strange and rather disconcerting ailment-- except at first she didn’t think of it as such. The morning was new, and she was warm in Fawkes’ arms. He was sleeping deeply behind her, his face buried in her hair, his breath washing heat over her scalp with every exhale. Normally she would have lingered, napping until the sun had risen a little higher, or turning around and waking him with a kiss, but as her brain struggled awake she noticed something: a smell.  
  
It smelled like… smoke. Not like a campfire, but like a house or scrapyard burning. She jolted awake and out of Fawkes’ arms. He stirred but didn’t come awake immediately, not even as she slipped out of bed and padded across the floor to the hall, glancing around and sniffing the air. The kitchen was still. They hadn’t left the stove on, and none of their lights had burnt out. Stepping outside, she saw the generator was chugging along normally. It smelled a little strongly of oil, but not like a fire. The garden was okay. The whole outside of the house was just fine. The little makeshift shed where she kept tools and fertilizer was cool and dark. Even the square concrete slabs and leftover debris of the other nearby houses were undisturbed. If she looked carefully, she could see a little bit of smoke in the distance to the east, but it seemed at least a mile off.  
  
“Addisson?”  
  
She jumped, startled, and turned to find Fawkes, which was only a surprise because she’d been so focused on that pervasive smell that he’d snuck up on her. He was barefoot and shirtless and carrying just a rusty garden hoe that he must have grabbed in his haste.  
  
“S-sorry,” she said, not sure what she was apologizing for except maybe just… being weird.  
  
“Are you alright?” he asked, stepping closer but not pulling her into a hug, maybe in case she was hurt or sick or something.  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” She shook her head and then nodded. “Yeah, I just, I thought something was on fire. I woke up and it smelled like something was burning.” She glanced back at the smoke in the distance, likely from a junk pile they hadn’t totally pilfered yet. “I guess the wind just carried it?”  
  
“Hmm.” Fawkes took a deep breath, not to look like he was sniffing the air. He didn’t say anything about it, but he didn’t corroborate her claim, so she figured he didn’t smell it. He usually had a better sense of smell than her (he had a better sense of most things, to be honest), but the wind had probably changed direction, and she was only still smelling it because it was in her nose already. “Do you want to have breakfast?” he asked instead.  
  
She nodded and gave him a smile that was probably a little bit strained. “Sure.”  
  
They headed back to the house, where they dressed for the day and made mirelurk egg omelettes. Addisson was halfway through hers when her war with the flu experienced a sudden upset. She spent the morning on the floor of the bathroom, cursing between both wet and dry heaves.  
  
_“Damn it,”_ she grumbled, while Fawkes hovered uneasily nearby. Her throat burned as her stomach seemed to try to crawl up her esophagus. She hated her teacher back in the vault. What would the man have done to better prepare her for this? Probably nothing, but she still associated it with him. It was unpleasant beyond words.  
  
_‘If this is the price I pay for living out here, then so be it,’_ she thought miserably, resting her head on the toilet seat and wrinkling her nose at the whole thing. _‘But so help me…!’_  
  
The nausea calmed down the next day, ramped up again the day after, then evened out over the next week, popping up at random intervals but not enough to make her lose her breakfast again. Various foods continued to repulse her, and she kept smelling things that didn’t seem to be there (until an enraged examination of her surroundings found the faint or distant source). And she was still dealing with the headaches and vague exhaustions, though they almost felt like long-term rivals at this point, just annoying her from the sidelines. But despite all that, she tended the garden every day, and her precious little plants continued to grow.  
  
Growing in the wasteland soil was different from growing in the lab back in Rivet City. Back there they’d done a lot of hydroponics, especially since they had access to a lot of clean water after the purifier was up and running. So far from the bay, that wasn’t really an option for Addisson now, but she’d really wanted to avoid the mirelurks, so it was a fair sacrifice. Instead she carefully fed the plants with boiled water (cooled down first, obviously; even the hardy mutated plants she was growing weren’t likely to care for scalding water), and as much manure as she could give them without nitrogen-burning them. Li had spent years carefully crossbreeding plants that had a chance in the wasteland, and that was probably the only reason they actually worked for Addisson at all. Not every seed took root, but the ones that did were surprisingly strong and fast-growing, with a little care. It was sort of like… well, sort of like the people who lived in the wasteland, she supposed. The ones that survived were desperate to keep surviving. They hung on to life tenaciously, and grew up faster than they might have in more forgiving situations.  
  
Under normal circumstances (the kind that didn’t exist anymore), most of her crops would have taken a lot longer to grow, but only about a month after planting, her first group of carrots was just about ready to harvest. She debated letting them grow longer, but seeing their pale orange tops sticking just slightly out of the dirt was getting her excited.  
  
“What do you think, Dogchow?” she asked. “I could just pick one and see how it’s doing. If it’s too early, then I only ruined one.”  
  
Dogmeat padded over to her and panted in her general direction. It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was enough.  
  
“You’re right,” she said, patting him on the head. Then she grabbed a spade and carefully dug into the dirt around the carrot with the biggest stalk. When it loosened, she pulled it gingerly out of the earth. It was beautiful in its way; a light orange conical root, dusty dry and covered in dirt, with wiry little root bits sticking out of it. She very nearly cried.  
  
...That reaction was surprising to her. _‘Huh. Look at me getting sentimental,’_ she thought, frowning at the wave of emotion. It didn’t hurt to be happy, but she wasn’t a crier. She hadn’t cried when they got the purifier started up, and she hadn’t cried at their wedding. She cried when her father died, but only after escaping danger, and that was a different kind of thing anyway. She laughed at the ridiculousness of crying over a carrot-- or, _almost_ crying, anyway. Then she decided to harvest the rest, to make room for another crop. Monthly batches of fresh produce was a tantalizing prospect.  
  
She was almost done pulling up the carrots when the nauseating wave of emotion snuck up again (or maybe it was an emotional wave of nausea). It was like a persistent feeling of dread high up in her stomach, like the anxiety you felt when trying to sneak around a deathclaw. It wasn’t acute enough to be terror, and it didn’t make her heart race. It just sat with her somewhere under her chest, a leaden weight.  
  
Finally the thought occurred to her: _‘Okay, this isn’t normal.’_ Intuition was telling her something was wrong-- or, or _off._ She’d always listened to her intuition because it tended to produce good results. When her gut said run, she ran. When her gut said fight, she fought. When her gut said a lonely eloquent mutant could be trusted, she trusted him. Right now her gut was saying something she couldn’t understand, but it definitely felt like ‘get this rock off of me!’.  
  
Addisson hurriedly collected the carrots she’d pulled and left the last few in the ground. It wouldn’t hurt, when she wasn’t going to sew any new seeds yet. She took the bundle of vegetables to the kitchen and laid them on the table, then went towards the bedroom to see if maybe a short nap would settle her nerves (or her stomach, whatever was causing the problem). She passed Fawkes on the way, affixing brackets to the wall in hopes of better supporting his hypothetical future staircase. He gave her a fleeting smile as he caught her eye; it faded when he saw her face.  
  
“Are you feeling unwell again?” he asked.  
  
She opened her mouth on silence for a short moment. “Uh, yeah, just a little bit,” she said, downplaying her feelings because she couldn’t think of how to describe it to Fawkes and would rather he didn’t worry. “I’m just gonna lay down for a few.”  
  
He nodded, taking her words at face value. “Then I’ll work elsewhere, so as not to disturb you.”  
  
For a moment, Addisson considered asking him to come lay down with her instead. That gut feeling seemed to calm a little at the thought of having Fawkes near, or at least within calling distance. But for simplicity she decided against it, and nodded. “Thanks.”  
  
Grabbing a blanket from the end of the bed (for comfort rather than warmth), she curled up on the mattress and pillowed her head on her arms. _‘Maybe it’s not the flu,’_ her tired thoughts said. _‘God, what if it’s something worse? Some incurable wasteland disease. Something crippling or fatal.’_  
  
It wasn’t a nice thought to fall asleep to, but she fell asleep anyway.  
  
She woke some little while later to warm hands on her back-- Fawkes’ hands, based on context. She sighed happily, sleepily. The nap had really done wonders, and waking up like this was a pleasant surprise.  
  
_‘What was I thinking?’_ she chided herself. _‘I’m not dying of some weird disease. I bet my rads just got a little high without me noticing. That’s what I get for not wearing my pip-boy at home.’_  
  
“Are you feeling better, my dear?” Fawkes asked, his voice a warm rumble behind her.  
  
“Mmm, lots,” Addisson replied, twisting around to fit into his arms better. The light streaming in from the half-shuttered window was still plenty bright, so she knew she ought to get up and work on things if she was feeling up to it. But after finally not being plagued by nausea or headaches (at the moment), and with Fawkes so near, she really just wanted to take a moment to appreciate what she had.  
  
Maybe more than _one_ moment.  
  
She pulled Fawkes closer, and he went to her after just a moment of hesitation, apparently happy to provide whatever suited her mood. Right now what suited her was to have him as close as humanly (or meta-humanly) possible. It was an hour later before she’d had enough to try to face the day again. She released him with a sated sigh, nuzzling into his arm happily before they both sat up to consider getting back to work. He kissed her on the neck and ran a hand over her hair, and she debated just deciding to end the day early.  
  
“I believe we both have projects to work on,” Fawkes murmured. His words were responsible; his tone was indulgent.  
  
Addisson batted her eyes at him. “Sure, but who would know if we skipped a day?”  
  
He shook his head, gazing at her fondly. _“You_ would know.”  
  
Shoulders slumping in resignation, she sighed. _“...Yeah…”_ she said, rolling her eyes. ”I _guess._ Maybe we can turn in early then.”  
  
“I anticipate it,” Fawkes said, leaving her with one more soft kiss before getting back to his efforts with the staircase. His gaze lingered on her as he left the room, but he dutifully followed his own advice.  
  
Breathing deeply, Addisson stretched. Her headache was starting to come back, now that she was conscious and not pleasantly distracted, but if that was all that ailed her for the rest of the day she would consider herself lucky. She shrugged on some clothes and went out to the bathroom, where an explanation for her discomfort presented itself.  
  
“Oh,” she said out loud, surprised by what probably should have been a pretty predictable event. Now it made sense. She didn’t keep close track of her period, but she was fairly certain she was just about due for it, now that she thought of it, and the small amount of blood she found was consistent with the irritating symptoms she’d been dealing with lately. Well, some of them. The others were definitely from the flu, she thought, but it wasn’t weird for all of the symptoms to be a little exaggerated when she was sick at the same time.  
  
She felt a little dumb that she hadn’t expected it, or figured that was what had caused her discomfort, but her periods had never been entirely regular, and since leaving the vault it had been even less predictable. During the whole fiasco with the purifier and trying to find her father, she’d missed her period for almost three whole months. According to Li, that wasn’t greatly unusual; supposedly, stress could delay menstruation quite a lot, and wastelanders sometimes dealt with less regular cycles than what the old books claimed was normal.  
  
Anyway, it was a huge relief to finally understand what was bothering her, especially as some silly part of her brain still suspected a disease of some sort. With renewed vigor, she folded up a spare cloth scrap (they scavenged sanitary pads sometimes but right now they were out of them) and got back to her carrots.  
  
Fawkes noticed her improved mood when they got together for dinner, and his cheer just made her feel all the better. He was impressed by the carrots too, and proud of her for her hard work on them. They threw together a pot of soup, and Addisson couldn’t help thinking it felt like a celebration, not just of their first successful crop yield, but something bigger than that (not that there was a whole lot bigger than survival).  
  
“You still wanna head to bed early?” Addisson asked, as they cleaned up from dinner. Normally there was still plenty to work on (guns to clean, books to read), but she felt light and happy and the idea of throwing open the bedroom window and lying with her husband under moonlight and a cool evening breeze was too appealing to want to focus on anything else.  
  
Fawkes carefully set aside the dishes before he turned to her. “You know I will go anywhere with you, at any time,” he said, bowing his head like a loyal knight to his liege… or like a husband with a penchant for the poetic, to his ever-endeared wife.  
  
There was nobody else for miles around, nobody to offend or disgust. They left the window wide open to the fresh air and the winking stars, and held each other just as long and as close as they liked, thinking that it simply couldn’t get much better. Addisson didn’t spare a thought for her ‘condition’, and Fawkes was always happy to have her any which way. No amount of blood could ever scare him off. She appreciated that he was undeterrable, for all that he’d started their relationship out shy.  
  
“Nothing could ever keep me from taking whatever you offer me,” he’d once said. “And nothing can stop me from giving you all that you desire.”  
  
It was a bold promise, but one he upheld at every opportunity, both giving and taking joyfully. And Addisson, of course, was happy to do the same.  
  
But it was a funny thing, their give-and-take. They were free with the gifts they shared-- their love, especially, flowed barrierless between them. There was never any reason to hold back, now that they no longer had to withstand the cruel ridicule of people who didn’t understand them; in fact, they almost loved harder in retaliation. And they were both relatively new to the wasteland, but both were fast learners. They had a good understanding of their place in the world, largely because they’d carved it out themselves. They understood, on an intrinsic level, what their love meant; they understood it like nobody else could. And they _knew,_ like Addisson knew that her actions had endless rippling repercussions in the Capital and possibly beyond, that what existed between them might someday mean _more_ than just the love that they felt and shared. (At least, that was what Father Clifford had claimed, when he married them.)  
  
But they were also too smart to think that their opportunities were boundless. Circumstances were… what they were, and both Addisson and Fawkes were well aware of what they could and could not do. That was why they’d moved away from Megaton, after all. That was why they were essentially on the same level, despite Fawkes’ near-immortal physical age. That was why they understood each other so well, in ways very few others could.  
  
And that was why they planned for a simple, quiet future. It was what they could envision because they knew all too well the real limits of what they could do. They didn’t hope to save the whole world with their love, or even defeat prejudice. Fawkes _especially_ was idealistic, but neither of them were so ignorant to hope for the impossible, regardless of how many times they’d beaten the odds.   
  
Impossible was not a word they were ready to redefine. Not _yet._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People who know me probably know exactly where this is going xD;

**Author's Note:**

> God I wrote this whole fic in like a week, and I'm hoping to keep up the frantic pace. =3 Next chapter should be next weekend, unless I write _a whole lot_ and get impatient again haha.


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